Freedom declined around the world last year with authoritarians solidifying their grip, but South Asia led a series of bright spots, according to the latest Freedom House annual report.
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The Washington-based pro-democracy research group elevated two countries to the status of “free”: Senegal, where the opposition triumphed after the outgoing president’s attempt to delay elections was defeated; and Bhutan, the Himalayan kingdom which consolidated a transition to democracy with competitive polls.
Tiny Bhutan gained the distinction of being the only South Asian country classified as “free”. But others in the region made strong gains in the index without changing categories – Bangladesh, where iron-fisted leader Sheikh Hasina fled in the face of a revolt, and Sri Lanka, where Anura Kumara Dissanayake was elected president on an anti-corruption platform after breaking the stranglehold of the two long-dominant parties.
The largest score improvement in the index – which tracks both countries and territories – was in Indian-administered Kashmir, where elections were held for the first time since the Hindu-nationalist government in New Delhi revoked the Muslim-majority region’s special status in 2019.
The big picture is that this was another year of the same trajectory of a global decline in freedom
But Freedom House said India as a whole saw further deterioration as it pointed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to gain influence over judicial appointments. The group downgraded the world’s largest democracy from “free” to “partly free” in 2021.
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Yana Gorokhovskaia, the co-author of the report, said it was the 19th consecutive year that freedom fell on a global level, but that 2024 was especially volatile due to the high number of elections.